Rhapsody vanishes into ether of slaughter market

Saturday

DELIA — Memories and photographs are all that remain of Rhapsody Rhose.

Jaime Cowan, who rode the purebred Arabian since childhood, clings to these as if grieving the death of a family member.

"I can still smell her," she said. "I can still feel her breath in my hair."

Rhapsody's demise is layered with betrayal by a friend and indifference by others. It also is an economic treatise shaped by America's prevalent view of equines as companion animals, the overseas desire for horse meat and the buyers, packers and shippers seizing opportunity.

The United States halted butcher of horses for human consumption four years ago, but sustained export of live animals.

Cowan said Rhapsody was sold by a Jackson County caretaker without her permission. Evidence points to the horse moving through Texas to Mexico. The 138,000 U.S. horses annually trucked to Canada or Mexico for slaughter endure a blur of unfamiliar corrals and trailer rides. Rhapsody's end likely came with a spine-severing knife thrust.

Critics say the trafficking system is rife with unethical business practices. They question safety of meat from horses given medicine unfit for people.

Slaughter proponents say low horse prices and rising costs of maintaining stock place owners in a quandary. What to do with culled horses? Powerful interests, including the 300,000-member American Quarter Horse Association, demand restoration of commercial slaughter.

Cowan never imagined Rhapsody would be a personal symbol of this debate.

"Rhapsody still had the heart of a 10-year-old," she said. "The most reliable of friends was taken from me."

CLOSING DOORS

This country has a history of consuming low-fat, high-protein horse meat. The U.S. military fed it to troops until mechanization made horses obsolete. In Topeka, Hill's Pet Nutrition slaughtered horses into the 1960s. Harvard University's faculty club had horse on the menu until 1985.

A dozen horse plants operated 20 years ago in the United States. Economics of consumer demand ruled the industry until California passed the first state ban in 1998.

Three major U.S. factories specializing in equine — Dallas Crown in Kaufman, Texas; Beltex in Fort Worth, Texas; and Cavel in DeKalb, Ill. — were in business a decade ago. Ninety percent of the meat went to Europe and Asia. The remainder was served to zoo carnivores.

In 2006, operation of the plants was jeopardized by Congress' blockade of federal funds for U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections. Packers temporarily worked around the obstacle by paying for USDA reviews.

The Texas plants closed in May 2007 after a federal court affirmed a 1949 state law against possession and transport of horse meat for humans. The Illinois plant followed in September 2007 after a separate court upheld constitutionality of a new Illinois statute banning horse slaughter for human consumption.

MAIN COURSE

Oregon trainer Dave Duquette, president of slaughter advocacy group United Horsemen, uses his head to make the point. He wears a PETA hat labeled "People Eating Tasty Animals." The Hermiston cowboy believes horses are livestock in the same sense as cattle, hogs and sheep.

"A dog or a cat is a small animal," he said. "You differentiate them from livestock. You can't bring a horse into the house."

He said debate about elimination of slaughter as a herd management tool shouldn’t be tainted by romantic ideas of the American West. The horse glut is real and abandonment at shows, sale barns and public lands is epidemic, he said. Tribal reservations are overrun by feral horses exhibiting characteristics of inbreeding.

"Some look like dinosaurs," Duquette said. "They used to take them to slaughter."

Duquette said people shouldn't criticize a food source they don't understand. He hosted a show at his training center featuring a horse meat barbecue. "We get a lot of Seattle people here," he said. "They ate it."

He's lobbying Congress to reverse policy on U.S. slaughter of horses because the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups are try to distort production dynamics of all livestock.

'PREDATORY'

Far from Duquette's ranch, Wayne Pacelle leads the nation's largest animal protection organization from L Street in Washington, D.C. Pacelle is the first vegan president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society.

"We're happy to accept credit for work on tamping down a disreputable and predatory industry," he said.

In contrast to livestock, he said, horses aren't raised for slaughter. They're bred for work or entertainment, but when owners' interest wanes thousands go to kill buyers. These middlemen inhumanely shipping horses to feedlots and border stations, he said. Most exported horses, he said, were treated with medication inappropriate for humans.

In Mexico, horses are typically immobilized by severing the spine. With the heart beating, they're hoisted by chain wrapped on a hind leg. A cut to the throat allows horses to bleed out.

Pacelle said Congress should expand U.S. slaughter prohibitions to capture the industry's every appendage.

"We don't have to be the nation that is the pipeline for horse meat to satisfy the demand of a small group of high-end foreign consumers," he said.

Vanished

The 15-year-old registered quarter horse spun left and right in the arena at Campbell's Sale Barn east of Linwood. When bidding stalled, the owner stopped to praise the animal beneath him. "It will make you coffee in the morning," he said.

The final $1,400 bid topped the market on a night when 18 other horses under the gavel averaged $150. A red stallion netted $35. The nine-year-old barrel racer went for $170. A gray mare brought $310. Out back in holding pens, a handful of horses were held out of the show. Cowan said Rhapsody began her journey to slaughter in the same barn.

She learned to ride Rhapsody as a child living near Paxico. They parted years later, but horse and rider reunited in 2010. She moved Rhapsody to a friend's land near Delia. In April, Cowan's husband discovered the horse gone. Cowan said she was sold by the caretaker for $90.

Cowan said Campbell initially had no recollection of the freckled gray. Later, she said, Campbell told her and a Jackson County Sheriff's Department investigator the horse went south to "old Mexico."

The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report in June recommending Congress approve federal funding for slaughter inspections or adopt an effective ban.

The agency discovered American horses were transported to Mexico and Canada for slaughter in 2010 at the same rate they were sent to packers four years ago. Last year, 137,984 horses were shipped to the two countries for meat production. In the last full year of U.S. slaughter, 137,688 U.S. horses were slaughtered in this country or after export.

GAO declared closure of U.S. slaughtering facilities "significantly and negatively affected" prices of lower-to-medium quality horses most likely earmarked for slaughter. At the same time, auditors say local government and animal organizations documented a rise in investigation of horse abuse and neglect after 2007.

"Horse welfare in the United States has generally declined," the report said.

In terms of federal oversight, GAO estimated 60 percent of owner-and-shipper certificates required for movement of horses were missing key information crucial to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. APHIS administers the Animal Welfare Act, but receives no official cooperation from Mexican or Texas officials.

Tug-of-war

U.S. Reps. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Jan Schakowski, D-Ill., introduced a bill in September to end the export of American horses for slaughter and human consumption.

"I personally believe in the importance of treating all horses as humanely and respectfully as possible," Burton said.

In the Senate, a companion bill by U.S. Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would prohibit moving, receiving, possessing, purchasing or selling horses to be slaughtered for human food.

Not to be outdone, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, R-Mont., put forward a measure ending the U.S. horse slaughter ban.

"We've seen some pretty shocking cases across Montana of horse abandonment and neglect as owners face tough economic times," Baucus said. "This ban is part of the problem."

Baccus supports a 2012 spending bill that would eliminate the USDA restriction on funding of horse meat inspections. Earlier this year, the House adopted a bill upholding the restriction on inspections by USDA.

"Industrial slaughter of horses should not be condoned by the United States government," said U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.

Rebounding

Careen Cain, founder of Shooting Star Equine Rescue, runs a nonprofit sanctuary south of Topeka. Many in her herd could easily have filtered to kill buyers. She says they like to comfort sellers by promising horses go to good homes.

"A lot of people in the equine community want to close their eyes," Cain said. "We really want to match horses with homes that will give the horse what it needs and treat them as a member of the family."

She said the situation demanded more selective breeding, organized gelding programs and commitment from racing insiders to cease collaboration with kill buyers.

Government or special-interest groups could sponsor euthanasia clinics, said Kim Sheppard, a western Missouri animal rights activist who owns two horses pulled from the brink. Shelby was 300 pounds underweight when acquired. Piute, a mustang removed from Wyoming, was adopted in Lawrence from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Cowan drew inspiration from Sheppard, Cain and others uneasy with horse slaughter. Her loss of Rhapsody was tamed by acquiring of Ranger, a Polish-Russian Arabian gelding, and Shadow, a half-Arabian mare. In a sense, the horses rescued her.

"I thought of it as a second chance," Cowan said.

Tim Carpenter can be reached

at (785) 295-1158

or timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.

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